Chinese New Year 2014: Google Doodle marks the Year of the Horse

Chinese New Year, heralding the start of the Year of the Horse, has been
celebrated with a Google Doodle

The festivities start on the first day of the lunar monthPhoto: GOOGLE

By Alice Philipson

10:24AM GMT 30 Jan 2014

Chinese New Year, which in 2014 marks the start of the Year of the Horse, has been celebrated with a Google Doodle.

The doodle shows a smiling girl with brown hair moving backwards and forwards on a wooden rocking horse.

Next to her, a boy is seen holding Chinese lanterns and tinsel ahead of the festivities.

Chinese New Year, also known as Spring Festival, is the most important celebration in the Chinese calendar. Traditionally, it celebrates the start of the season of ploughing and sowing and the arrival of new life.

The festivities start on the first day of the lunar month – this year on Friday January 31 – and continue until the fifteenth, when the moon is brightest.

In London, which will see the biggest celebrations outside of Asia, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to descend on the West End to mark the occasion.

A colourful New Year’s Parade will pass along Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue before reaching Chinatown. Acrobats, traditional dancers and singers visiting from China are expected to take part in an official opening ceremony in Trafalgar Square.

At Chinese New Year, people traditionally wear red clothes and give children so-called lucky money concealed in red envelopes.